Substitute Avatar
by ReidsFanGirl18
Summary: The war ended over a year ago but it left the world unstable, so the gaang must help Zuko and the Earth King rebuild and deal with the Fire Nation Colonies. But when Aang ends up sick the rest of the gaang has to take over for a few days...hm...this could go either way...
1. Chapter 1

**I realize it's been a long time since I updated my other fic, mainly because I just don't know what else to do with it and on top of that I've been foiled by school responsibilities and technical difficulties. Let the creative juices flow how and where they will… this is the result. I'm about to have a month off so if my creativity doesn't run dry again and my computer behaves there will be faster updates.**

It had been over a year since the war with the fire nation had ended, but there had been little peace for the very people who had ended it. Everyone, especially Aang… was busier than ever, trying to restore order and harmony to a world that had been ripped apart over a hundred years. Aang knew in the back of his mind that they'd been silly to think that they could undo a century of damage in a mere sixteen months. But he still hadn't expected it to be this bad. The confrontation at Yu Dao and the subsequent quarrel with Roku had been the worst so far. Now it was mainly playing mediator between the colonials, earth kingdom citizens, Earth Kind Que, and Zuko. It was no easy task.

It was wearing on them all. Aang could feel himself being run ragged but he didn't let the others see any of it. But it was getting more and more difficult to hide. He hadn't felt like himself at all since the previous night. He felt cold although the weather was still more summer than fall; and more than the now constant exhaustion his head pounded and light was beginning to make his eyes ache. Actually…his entire body screamed in pain with every step he took.

It was still early in the morning, but he thought he was doing a pretty good job of hiding it from the others, since they'd all met up once more it was Toph he was most worried about seeing through his façade. It was entirely possible that she could feel him shaking…and if she did, knowing her she'd either sound the alarm as embarrassingly as possible, or take him earth bending and work him until he passed out and the others _had _to notice.

He was sitting there, beside the unoccupied house they'd been given to stay in while they remained in Yu Dao, meditating in the shade. This in and of itself was out of the ordinary, usually he faced the rising sun while he did this, and usually from the highest point he could get to; but his pounding head and newfound sensitivity to light would've made that utter torture today. He wasn't there for more than half an hour before Toph came and yanked him by his collar out of town toward an area surrounded by rocky cliffs.

"We haven't had the chance to train together in months. The last time I saw you, you were not a master. Let's see what you've got." Toph said.

"Ok…" Aang said, trying really, really hard to hide how much he did not want to do this. "So what are you planning for us today?" Aang asked her.

"To start out, you'll spar with each of my other students. The first one down for more than ten seconds or who gets knocked out of the sparring ring loses each round." She said.

There they stood, a big guy who reminded Aang a lot of the inoronically named Pipsqueak, who'd been a member of Jet's old gang, a little girl who gave him the distinct feeling that she was a lot stronger than she looked, and a strange teenaged boy, roughly Sokka's height but much skinnier… everything about him was…well…dark…

"Aang, Penga… you two are up first…" Toph ordered. Then she stamped the ground with her foot and raised a perfectly round ring of earth out from the bedrock beneath them. Aang and the little girl called Penga jumped up onto it.

Aang got ready to dodge her attacks, since he really didn't feel up to throwing too many blows of his own. But his reflexes were off and he was starting to feel dizzy. She threw a boulder at his center. He managed to jump up and out of its way but it caught his ankle and he slammed head first into the rocky arena.

"Come ON Twinkle Toes! I know you can do better than that!" Toph yelled at him. She was right, that was sloppy but it was all he could manage right now and there was no way he was going to tell her that. He forced himself up, but as he did the world started to spin in front of him.

"Somebody catch him he's going to…" But before Toph could finish her sentence Aang fell to the ground with a thud, passed out.

"So that means I win? Penga asked.

"That's kinda the least of my worries right now kid…but yeah I guess so…" Toph said as she walked toward her friend's limp body.

"What's with you today Air Head?" She asked. Aang did not reply. So she picked him up and threw him over her shoulder like a sack of vegetables and carried him back to the house.

"Katara! Sokka! We have a problem here…" she said as she arrived, she laid Aang as gently as she could (gentle was somewhat of a foreign concept to her) on a row of cushions beside the long, low dining table in the main room.

"What happened Toph?" They asked at the same time.

"I don't know! We were training like old times, I had him sparring one of my students, and yeah he took a dive, but it wasn't that bad. That shouldn't have been enough to knock him out…"

Katara was listening, but she was focused on Aang… she watched him. She saw tiny beads of sweat on his forehead, she watched the way he was shivering off and on, and she heard the quiet rasping sound with each breath he took. She put her hand gently on his forehead.

"Toph…I don't think this has much to do with falling during a training session…he's burning up…"

"So…what…? He's sick or something?" She asked.

"I think so…" Katara answered.

"But Aang's never sick!" Sokka said.

"He hasn't been yet, as long as we've known him but… he clearly is now." Katara said.

She uncapped her bending water and tried to heal him. She could feel that something was off, she could sense the illness, whatever it was, pulsing through his chi… but she couldn't do anything about it… she couldn't even do anything about the twisted up ball of energy in his head that she knew had to be painful. She stopped.

"Well…whatever this is… my water bending can't do anything for it…" she said with defeat in her voice.

So they carried him to his room (for once since Zuko's old vacation home they all actually had their own), for now it was all they really could do. They layed him back on the bed and pulled the blanket over him. Katara an old piece of cloth wet in icy water and folded in in half across his forehead.

"Any idea what this is?" Sokka asked. Katara shood her head.

"No, none… I haven't seen this before. I'm hoping he'll recover on his own… For now let's let him sleep.

So they did, and it was three or four hours before Aang finally regained consciousness.

"Hey, you're awake." Toph said happily as Aang's stormy gray eyes shuddered open.

"What…happened…?" He asked hoarsely

"Well…you passed out in the middle of training…" Sokka told him.

He tried to get up, his arms shook just from the effort it was taking to get himself into a sitting position.

"Aang. No!" Katara told him. "You're burning up, you're not going anywhere.

Realizing that he was way passed pretending he was fine, Aang nodded in agreement and let himself fall back onto the mattress.

"How're you feeling?" Katara said.

"And don't lie and say you're fine… I'll be able to tell…" Toph reminded him.

"Honestly…terrible…" he admitted. With that he turned away from them and curled himself into a ball as his body was seized by a coughing fit. Once it stopped he groaned in dismay. "Guys…were still trying to get this place back in order… I'm the Avatar… it's my job to make things go smoothly. I c-can't do that if I'm stuck in bed…."

"Aang…you can't do that if you can hardly stand either…" Sokka told him.

"Aang… you need to rest… just leave it to us for a couple of days ok?" Katara asked pleadingly.

"Alright…" he answered. "Doesn't seem like we have much of a choice"

"Not really…" the rest of them said together.

Not an hour later they heard a fight break out in the market streets. It began by two teenagers throwing fruit at one another but it quickly became a mob scene. The others looked at each other but said nothing. Aang, they thought, was asleep. They closed the shudders in every part of the house to block out some of the noise.

"Should we do something…?" Sokka asked.

"Would Aang do something?" Toph asked back.

"I think so… the question is _what_ do we do about this…" Suki asked.

"I don't know…do you think we should ask Aang what he would do?" Sokka asked?

Katara glanced at the door directly behind her. "No…I say we don't bother him with this until we have to…let's see if we can break this one up ourselves…" she said.

They stood up to leave.

"What's going on out there?" Aang asked.

"Oh nothing…just a mob throwing fruit bombs at each other…" Toph said.

They saw Aang's door start to move.

"Aang…" Toph said. "Don't. Even. Think. About. It. Or next time I spar with you I'll make you wish you'd never been born."

Aang let go of the door handle and fell back on the bed. He knew that Toph was perfectly capable of delivering on her threat. He also knew that she didn't actually plan to but that she would if he gave her a reason to.

_Let them handle it, see how it goes…I could always step in later if things got really, really bad… _he thought.


	2. Chapter 2

Meanwhile, the food fight turned brawl was quickly turning into a mob scene, those involved were starting to forget the fruit and beat each other up. Toph took it upon herself to divide the two loosely defined opposing sides with a rock wall. That at least got their attention but then they were less than pleased with the group of teenagers in front of them.

"Hey!" said a very large man on what seemed to be the Earth Kingdom side. "What's the big idea here punks?"

"We should be asking you that!" Suki answered.

"Why are you guys fighting anyway?" Sokka asked him.

"Ji Yao raised the prices on his fruit cart… we overturned it in protest!"

"Then those ruffians started throwing my merchandise at my head!" said a voice from the Fire Nation side

"So all this…" Katara said, "All this trouble…is about overpriced fruit?"

"The soldiers started it!" the first man yelled.

"Wait a miniute… You mean to tell me that trained, disciplined, warriors…started this whole mess?" Sokka exclaimed.

"What? Now that there's peace we have nothing to do! We're bored and it shouldn't cost me two pieces of silver for a mango…" said an unseen man from deeper in the earth kingdom crowd.

This earned a face palm from Sokka.

"You guys can't find anything more constructive to do with yourselves than terrorizing merchants?" he asked.

"No…" he said. "There really aren't any steady jobs around here that aren't already filled…"

"Well could you at least stop trying to start a riot?" Sokka asked.

"Sure but…shouldn't the Avatar be the one trying to talk us out of this?"

"Ordinarily, yeah…sure…"

"Then where is he?" the man asked.

"He sent us to deal with you bozos, so leave each other alone!" Toph yelled.

With that, the crowd dispersed and the rock wall receded back into the earth.

"That was…odd…" Sokka said.

"Yeah but…at least it was quick to take care of…if could've been worse…" Katara said. "They might not have listened so easily."

They stuck around about an hour to make sure things were going to stay peaceful before going home.

When they got there, they found sitting in bed leaning against the short wooden headboard.

"H-hey guys…"

"Hey Aang, we're back…" Sokka said.

"How do you feel?" Katara asked.

Aang's only answer was to hang his head in dismay, Katara nodded.

"So…guys…what was all that about?" Aang asked.

"Some bored ex-soldiers with nothing to do decided to terrorize a merchant who jacked up the price of fruit in this town…" Sokka explained.

"They started a riot…over expensive fruit…?" Aang asked.

"Yeah it was pretty stupid…but the guy was right. That merchant wanted two silver pieces for one mango!" Toph said.

"That…is ridiculous…" Aang said, he coughed hard. "But…th-that's…still not worth fighting over…"

"Is there anything you need, Aang?" Katara asked, trying to change the subject before he stressed himself out.

"Water would be great…" he answered.

"You got it…" She said, then she turned and left the room to get a cup of clean water, dragging Sokka out behind her.

Once they were out of Aang's earshot she released him. The atrium between the main living space and the bedrooms was a long, wide hallway lit only by firefly lanterns above them. The only sound they heard was the insects buzzing around in their containers.

"What was that for Sis?" He asked.

"What were you thinking in there?" She asked.

"I was just telling him what happened…" he answered. "Are you saying I shouldn't?"

"No but- ok maybe I am…think about it Sokka… in the nearly two whole years we've known Aang, not once has this ever happened before… you're the science guy…what changed?"

"Well…he has had a lot on his plate lately…even more on his mind…considering the whole Zuko making Aang promise to end things if he ever went back the other way and then doing exactly that…and then there was the thing with Roku wanting Aang to carry the promise out instead of just talking some sense into the guy…plus the whole fiasco here between the Earth King, colonials, and the earth kingdom citizens who didn't actually want the colonists to have to leave against the ones who did…"

"So stress is the new factor here…" she clarified.

"Well I don't know about new…but yeah, almost as much as before the invasion and that was just a few days…this has been months and the last few weeks have been worse…"

"So maybe…just maybe…this is his body's way of saying he needs a break from all this…maybe that's partly why I can't heal it…"

"That's possible…but what…does that mean we can't tell him about anything that's going on? When he takes over again he might need to know…" Sokka pointed out.

"I'm just saying that for now maybe it's best if we keep the details and ridiculous justifications to a minimum…" She said, giving him a _Please Sokka listen to me for once _look.

"Ok…fine…" he said.

"Good!" she said, walking off briskly toward the well outside.

When she came back in and started heading toward Aang's room with the cup she saw Sokka cleaning his machete, she still had something she wanted to ask him but first she brought Aang the water. He was now alone and passed out in an uneasy sleep. She set the cup on the wooden lip of the wall just above the bed and replaced the cold cloth on his forehead. His fever had actually risen instead of fallen. She made the tub of water she'd brought in that morning semi-solid with ice and dipped the rag in that before putting it back. Hopefully making it even colder would make it actually help.

"Don't worry about it Aang…" she whispered. "We can handle it at least for a little while…"

She turned and stared out the window for a moment, wondering if that were true. It was evening now, the sky was a dark, dusky blue but the bright pink sunset was still visible on the horizon.

Like all the bedrooms, Aang's was lit by a single flame lantern which jutted out from the fall by the door. Katara blew it out as she left and went to Sokka's room next door.

She found her brother laying on his own bed staring up at the ceiling above them. His expression was uncharacteristically serious and it concerned her.

"Is everything alright in here Sokka?" she saked.

"You were right you know…before…" he said.

"Huh?"

"About Aang, about how it has been pretty nuts lately and how it does weigh on him more than the rest of us…how he needs to leave it all alone right now…"

"Ok, if you realize that then why were you…?"

"I know I sounded like I do when I'm telling a hunting story for the fun of it…but it wasn't like that Katara… I only said anything to Aang and didn't stop Toph when she did because I was genuinely hoping he'd have some ideas in case today wasn't the last we've heard of this…"

"You don't think it was…do you?" she asked.

"No… I know what it's like to be a warrior without anything to fight for… you used to complain how I'd run off and play soldier all the time… what that actually was, was practice, I was usually hunting either to protect our village from polar leopards and tiger seals, or to put some meat on the table… but I still yearned to see an actual battle… it's the same for those men we saw in town today… they may have already seen their share…but they want more… but there isn't and there isn't any reason for them to use their skills to take up hunting in a place like this… so they'll take what they can get, any provocation or excuse no matter how small or stupid it is…and they'll keep doing that until they find another constructive outlet…"

"So you think to put a stop to it we might have to give them one?"

"Yes and I can't come up with anything…that's why I was wondering but Aang thought about this…"

"Sokka…"

"I know…leave the kid alone…and I know your right…I just hope we can hold them off without doing anything permanent or letting them start another war until Aang can do something about it."

"Me too…I hope this doesn't last long…I hope one nice, long good night's sleep is enough and this all blows over by morning…" she said.

"Do you think that'll happen?" Sokka asked.

"I seriously doubt it…"

"Let's just go get some dinner with the others…"

"Ok…"


End file.
